Edwin Black: the truth about the Farhud

An interview with Edwin Black, the US writer behind the idea of the global commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Farhud, was broadcast on the Israel Broadcasting Authority's English language channel over the festival of Shavuot.

Mr Black told IBA anchorman Eylon Aslan-Levy that the Farhud, a two-day pogrom in June 1941, was carried out, not by Arab fascists, but Arab Nazis who idolised Adolph Hitler and identified with his aim of exterminating Jews wherever they happened to be in the world.It therefore merited to be called the Iraqi-Jewish 'Kristallnacht.'

The Farhud was relatively unknown because European historians and western Holocaust Museums had framed the Nazi extermination of the Jews as a European story.

 When asked why the world was silent about the 800,000 + Jewish refugees from Arab lands, Mr Black said that there had been created two classes of refugee - the privileged 'Arab refugees' and the 'untermenschen' Jewish refugees. In order to achieve peace, the Jewish refugees must obtain justice - but justice is only conditional on recognition.
More about the Farhud commemoration
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